cecil/cecil

A simple and powerful content-driven static site generator.

8.88.1 2026-04-01 13:41 UTC

Requires

• php: ^8.2||^8.3||^8.4||^8.5
• ext-fileinfo: *
• ext-gd: *
• ext-mbstring: *
• benjaminhoegh/parsedown-toc: ^1.5
• cecil/resource-watcher: ^4.1
• cocur/slugify: ^4.7
• dflydev/dot-access-data: ^3.0
• erusev/parsedown-extra: ^0.9
• intervention/image: ^3.11
• james-heinrich/getid3: ^1.9
• jolicode/jolinotif: ^3.2
• laravel-zero/phar-updater: ^1.4
• matthiasmullie/minify: ^1.3
• performing/twig-components: ^0.7
• psr/log: ^3.0
• psr/simple-cache: ^3.0
• scrivo/highlight.php: ^9.18
• scssphp/scssphp: ^2.1
• spatie/image-optimizer: ^1.8
• symfony/config: ^7.4
• symfony/console: ^7.4
• symfony/dom-crawler: ^7.4
• symfony/filesystem: ^7.4
• symfony/finder: ^7.4
• symfony/mime: ^7.4
• symfony/polyfill-intl-icu: ^1.33
• symfony/process: ^7.4
• symfony/property-access: ^7.4
• symfony/serializer: ^7.4
• symfony/translation: ^7.4
• symfony/twig-bridge: ^7.4
• symfony/validator: ^7.4
• symfony/var-dumper: ^7.4
• symfony/yaml: ^7.4
• twig/cache-extra: ^3.22
• twig/intl-extra: ^3.22
• twig/string-extra: ^3.22
• twig/twig: ^3.22
• voku/html-min: ^4.5
• wapmorgan/mp3info: ^0.1
• yosymfony/toml: ^1.0

Requires (Dev)

• ergebnis/composer-normalize: ^2.48
• friendsofphp/php-cs-fixer: ^3.92
• phpmd/phpmd: ^2.15
• phpstan/phpstan: ^2.1
• phpunit/phpunit: ^11.5
• squizlabs/php_codesniffer: ^4.0

Suggests

• ext-intl: Intl locales support.

Provides

• psr/log-implementation: 3.0
• psr/simple-cache-implementation: 3.0

MIT

• Arnaud Ligny

• twig
• markdown
• static site generator

README

A simple and powerful content-driven static site generator.

Cecil is a CLI application that merges plain text files (written in Markdown), images and Twig templates to generate a static website.

📄Documentation · 💻Demo · 🐛Issues tracker · 💬Discussions

Quick Start

Read the Quick Start documentation page.

Create and deploy a blog site:

Features

• No database, no server, no dependency: performance and security
• Your pages are stored in Markdown flat files with a YAML front matter
• Powered by Twig, a flexible template engine, with themes support
• Pagination, sitemap, redirections, robots.txt, taxonomies, RSS are generated automatically
• Handles and optimizes assets for you
• Download one file and run it
• Easy to deploy

Installation

Download cecil.phar from your browser or from your terminal:

curl -LO https://github.com/Cecilapp/Cecil/releases/latest/download/cecil.phar

Important

PHP 8.2+ is required.

Usage

• Get help: php cecil.phar help
• Create a new website: php cecil.phar new:site
• Preview your website: php cecil.phar serve

Contributing

See Contributing.

Thanks goes to these wonderful people (emoji key):

Arnaud Ligny 🐛 📖 🤔 🚧 📣 💬 👀 🌍 📢	Frank Taillandier 📖 🤔 📣 🌍 🧑‍🏫	Martin Szulecki 🐛 💻 🤔	Matthieu Vion 🐛 💻
Chun-Sheng, Li 💻 🛡️	Benjamin Hirsch 🐛 💻	Pete Favelle 🐛 💻 🤔	Gert de Pagter 🐛 🚇
Joe Vallender 🐛	Jawira Portugal 🐛	Yufan You 🛡️	Mathieu Santostefano 📖 🐛
Max 📖	Progi1984 💻 🤔	Franck Matsos 💻

This project follows the all-contributors specification. Contributions of any kind welcome!

npx all-contributors add
npx all-contributors generate

Development

Build binaries

Build binaries with Box and phpacker:

# Install globally
composer global require humbug/box
composer global require phpacker/phpacker
# Add to your PATH
export PATH=~/.composer/vendor/bin:$PATH

# Build the PHAR file
composer run build:phar
# Check the PHAR file
php dist/cecil.phar about
# Build the package (with PHP binary included)
composer run build:package
# Check the package
./dist/build/<os>/<os>-<arch> about

Build API documentation

Build the API documentation with phpDocumentor:

# Install phpDocumentor globally
curl -Lo phpdoc https://phpdoc.org/phpDocumentor.phar
# Build the API documentation
php phpdoc

Release

To release a new version, create a new Git tag with the version number (e.g. 1.0.0), push it to GitHub and the release will be automatically published by GitHub Actions.

git tag 1.0.0
git push origin 1.0.0

Tip

To create a pre-release, add a suffix to the version number (e.g. 1.0.0-beta.1).

The automated workflow also will publish the release to the website, update the Homebrew formula and the Scoop manifest.

Sponsors

                

License

Cecil is a free software licensed under the EUPL-1.2 license.

Cecil © Arnaud Ligny
Logo © Cécile Ricordeau